If we’re going to reshape our country and our economy, restore our government, and save our democracy, we need to be willing to fight for bold, structural solutions to the problems we face as a nation. This document is a work in progress and will continue to be updated based on input and insight from Latinos, Latinas and Latinx activists, community leaders, organizers, policy experts and stakeholders.
This plan was originally released during Senator Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign.
We are living through a dark moment in our nation’s history. Donald Trump ran a campaign on demonizing Mexicans and immigrants—and won. Since then, Latino communities and communities of color have borne the brunt of attacks from Donald Trump and his administration—from family separation to deportations to inciting violence—all while padding the pockets of private detention centers and their own corrupt personal interests.
But, we didn’t get here overnight.
From Tejano ranchers losing their land in the Southwest to students punished for speaking Spanish in school to toxic dumping in Puerto Rico, the United States has a long-history of government-sanctioned injustices against Latinos.
Yet, at every turn in our nation’s history, Latinos, Latinas and Latinx people have been at the forefront of the fight for social, racial and economic justice -- leading with bold, unwavering courage and unshakable hope.
From education advocate Rafael Cordero, trans liberation icon Sylvia Rivera, education civil rights leader Sylvia Mendez, labor leader Dolores Huerta, and Chicano students leading the 1968 East LA walkouts to youth climate activist Alexandria Villaseñor, the undocumented movement of today, and millions of parents working every day toward a better future for their children, we know that when Latinos fight back, they win.
If we’re going to reshape our country and our economy, restore our government, and save our democracy, we need to be willing to fight for bold, structural solutions to the problems we face as a nation. That means tackling generations of racial injustice and systemic discrimination head on and building a government that works for everyone.
That’s exactly what my plans do. Here are a few examples:
My Pre-K-12 Education plan ensures every child has access to a high quality public education regardless of their skin color, where they live, the language they speak at home, how much money their parents make, or their immigration status.
My comprehensive debt relief plan for Puerto Rico provides a pathway for the island to rebuild and thrive.
My immigration plan reshapes our immigration system into one that matches our best values as a country, calls for a pathway to citizenship for millions of our neighbors and fixes the crisis at the border.
My criminal justice plan will end the practice of mass incarceration that has destroyed the lives of so many Black and Latino men and their families.
A comprehensive approach to climate change will be a top priority of my administration, and I will ensure that justice for communities of color that have borne the brunt of environmental pollution is at the center of our response
And on day one of my Administration, I will use my executive authority to start closing the pay gap between Latinas and everyone else - because it’s about time we fully valued the work of women of color.
I know first-hand what working families have to fight through every day just to survive. I grew up in Oklahoma on the ragged edge of the middle class. After my daddy’s heart attack, my mom worked a minimum wage job at Sears, so we wouldn’t lose our house. My life has had lots of twists and turns -- getting a scholarship to college, falling in love, dropping out of college at the age of 19, and getting married to my first husband. But because of the sacrifices my family made and the opportunities that were available to me, I got to be the first one in my family to go to college and then become a public school teacher, law professor, U.S. Senator, and now a candidate for president.
In our country, you ought to be able to take care of yourself and the people you love and build a better future for your children. That should be the fundamental promise of America.
My commitment to the Latino community is that when I’m President, I will continue to fight and work with the community to put real economic and political power in the hands of working people. Here’s how we’ll do it:
Everyone deserves a safe, decent, and affordable place to live. But for many Latino families, home ownership is out of reach. Of the 100 cities with the largest number of Latino households in the country, only 2 -- El Paso and Laredo, Texas -- have closed the Latino-white home ownership gap.
Low access to banking and credit, racist real estate practices, and discriminatory lending practices have all served as barriers to Latino home ownership. And in the lead-up to the financial crisis, government regulators ignored warning signs as predatory financial institutions targeted minority communities with subprime mortgages that sucked billions of dollars in wealth out of those communities. During the crisis, the Latino community suffered the greatest loss of homeownership of all groups and lost 67% of its total wealth.
Elizabeth’s Housing Plan for America includes a historic down payment assistance program targeted at families in formerly redlined areas. Experts say Elizabeth’s plan is a “brilliant plan to close the racial wealth gap.”
Elizabeth’s plan will also lower rents, take a first step in closing the racial wealth gap, and make it easier for Americans to access affordable housing. This includes:
Strengthening fair housing law and enforcement, giving HUD the tools to take on modern-day redlining and fight housing segregation,
Investing $500 billion over the next ten years to build, preserve, and restore millions of units that will be affordable to lower-income families,
Reducing rent by 10%,
Creating 1.5 million new jobs in housing construction and rehabilitation, and
Promoting economic growth.
This plan is a big win for America’s families. Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan for safe and affordable housing.
But that’s not all. Gentrification is displacing communities of color, rising rents are crushing millions of families, and landlords are exploiting their power over tenants. Over half of Latino renters are cost-burdened -- spending over 30% of their income in rent -- and Latino households spend a disproportionate amount of their income on energy costs. Research has shown that low-income women in Black and Latino neighborhoods face a heightened risk of eviction. Spanish-speaking renters have been harassed by landlords for not speaking English and sent illegal eviction notices. And the Trump administration’s racist housing agenda is putting tens of thousands of immigrant renter families and their children at risk of eviction from public housing.
Elizabeth will expand on her affordable housing plan by protecting and empowering renters. She will:
Secure tenants’ rights nationwide and fight exploitation by corporate landlords,
Withdraw HUD’s racist “mixed status rule” and extend protections to end housing discrimination based on tenants’ immigration status and source of income,
Tackle the growing cost of rent,
Invest in safe, healthy, and green public housing, and
Rein in payday lenders and other predatory lending practices.
Click here to learn more about her plan to protect and empower renters.
Elizabeth spent most of her career studying why families go broke. Her research showed that nearly 90% of these families were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup. Bankruptcy doesn’t affect all people equally -- it mirrors the systemic inequalities in our economy. Elizabeth’s research found that Latino families are twice as likely to file for bankruptcy than white families. The persistent wealth gap in America means that families of color have far less wealth than white families on average -- and at the same time, families of color are far more likely to be abused by predatory lending practices.
Elizabeth spent ten years battling the banking industry over the bad 2005 bankruptcy bill -- which spent more than $100 million on lobbying efforts. The bill became law with overwhelming support from Republicans and support from some Democrats in Congress.
After the 2005 bankruptcy bill passed, the credit card companies raked in giant profits after the bill passed -- and families in need paid the price. By making it harder for people to discharge their debts and keep current on their house payments, the 2005 bill made the 2008 financial crisis significantly worse: experts found that the bill “caused about 800,000 additional mortgage defaults and 250,000 additional foreclosures.” Elizabeth’s plan will repeal the harmful provisions in the 2005 bankruptcy bill and overhaul consumer bankruptcy rules in this country to give Americans a better chance of getting back on their feet. She will fight to:
Make it easier for people being crushed by debt to obtain relief through bankruptcy;
Expand people’s rights to take care of themselves and their children while they are in the bankruptcy process;
End the absurd rules that make it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy;
Let more people protect their homes and cars in bankruptcy so they can start from a firm foundation when they start to pick up the pieces and rebuild their financial lives;
Help address shameful racial and gender disparities that plague our bankruptcy system; and
Close loopholes that allow the wealthy and corporate creditors to abuse the bankruptcy system at the expense of everyone else.
Click here to learn more about her plan to overhaul our bankruptcy system so it helps working families, not giant companies.
In the wealthiest country on the planet, access to affordable, high-quality child care and early education should be a right, not a privilege reserved for the rich. Latinos make up over one-quarter of all young children in the U.S.; however, nearly 60% of Latino families live in child care deserts, and Latino parents are more likely to face barriers to finding affordable child care due to lower incomes and non-standard work hours.
Elizabeth’s Universal Child Care and Early Learning plan will guarantee high-quality child care and early education for every child in America from birth to school age. This means that high-quality child care and early education will be free for millions of families and affordable for everyone.
Under this new plan:
12 million kids will take advantage of these new high-quality options — nearly double the number that currently receive formal child care outside the home.
More parents can work more hours if they choose to, producing stronger economic growth.
Quality early education will produce better health, educational, and employment outcomes well into adulthood.
Latinas make up 21% of the early childhood education and care workforce, but average the lowest hourly wages. Under Elizabeth’s plan, more than a million child-care workers will get higher wages because they are doing the educational work that teachers do and will be paid like comparable public school teachers.
This plan gives every kid a fair shot. Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan for universal child care and early learning.
Climate change is the existential threat of our time but also presents an opportunity to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and rebuild the middle class while we repower our economy to run on 100% clean energy.
Latinos -- particularly Spanish-speaking Latinos -- are highly engaged and aware of the threat climate change poses to the health of our communities and understand the scale and urgency of our response.
A comprehensive approach to addressing climate change would be a top priority in a Warren administration. To really bend the curve on climate, we’ll need sustained big, structural change across a range of industries and sectors -- from green manufacturing to sustainable agriculture. That’s why Elizabeth has woven Green New Deal policies throughout her plans, and that’s why she’ll use all the levers of government to defeat the climate crisis.
All told, independent economists have estimated that Elizabeth’s plans to address the climate crisis through a Green New Deal will inject over $10 trillion dollars into our economy and create over 10 million new jobs.
Elizabeth will also ensure that justice is at the center of our response to climate change. Decades of discrimination and environmental racism have compounded in communities that have been overlooked for too long. While whites largely cause air pollution, Blacks and Latinos are more likely to breathe it in. Unsurprisingly, these communities also experience higher rates of childhood asthma. And many more low-income and minority communities are exposed to toxins in their water - including lead and chemicals from industrial and agricultural run-off.
Elizabeth believes that the solution to our crisis of environmental injustice must be led by the communities who are most affected by industrial pollution, which is why the federal government must support and uplift their efforts — including by better identifying at-risk communities and prioritizing resources to support them and remediate historic injustices. A Warren administration will direct at least $1 trillion in climate investments into frontline communities, create millions of new good, middle-class union jobs to fight climate change, honor our commitments to fossil fuel workers, hold corporate polluters accountable, restore protections that safeguard our air and water, and elevate the voices of frontline and fenceline community leaders at the highest levels of our government.
While any community can be hit by a hurricane, flood, extreme weather, or fire, the impact of these kinds of disasters are particularly devastating for low-income communities, people with disabilities, and people of color. Latino communities in California have been some of the hardest hit by recent wildfires. As president, Elizabeth will prioritize at-risk populations in disaster planning, response, and recovery -- including undocumented immigrants and language-diverse communities. And Elizabeth will fight for protections for all workers who are facing increasingly dangerous working conditions from climate change, like farmworkers who suffer from extreme heat.
Click here to read more about some of Elizabeth’s plans to combat the climate crisis and our crisis of environmental injustice.
The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in prison and jail.
To make matters worse, the evidence is clear that there are structural race problems in our system -- Latino men are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as white men, while Latina women and girls are nearly 30% more likely to be incarcerated as white women. Black and Latinos are more likely than whites to have bail denied, to receive a higher bond, and to be held in custody because they cannot pay their bond. Latino children are twice as likely to have an incarcerated parent as white children.
We know that the vast majority of police officers sign up so they can protect their communities, but we also know that people of color disproportionately experience trauma at the hands of law enforcement, sometimes with life-altering consequences. And where law enforcement is mixed with immigration enforcement, immigrants and their families are less likely to report crimes, and overall public safety suffers.
We can’t tackle the problems plaguing our criminal justice system by nibbling around the edges. Real reform requires examining every step of this system: From what we choose to criminalize, to how law enforcement and prosecutors engage with communities and the accused, to how long we keep people behind bars, how we treat them when they’re there, and how we reintegrate them when they return.
Elizabeth’s plan will end cash bail that keeps people in jail for being poor, repeal the 1994 crime bill that exacerbated our mass incarceration crisis, get rid of private prisons and detention centers so corporations can’t violate rights and profit from people’s pain, end immigrant-only prisons, separate law enforcement from immigration enforcement, fundamentally change how police work is done in America, and provide solutions by prioritizing prevention over punishment. And she’ll redefine what it means to invest in public safety by prioritizing solutions that lift people up, rather than locking them up.
Click here to continue reading about Elizabeth’s plan on comprehensive criminal justice reform.
People with disabilities are still fighting for economic security, equal opportunity, and inclusion. People of color with disabilities face the “double burden” of racism and ableism. The unemployment rate of people with disabilities seeking employment is also more than twice the unemployment rate of individuals with no disability, and Latinos with disabilities have a higher unemployment rate than white individuals with disabilities. Students with disabilities face racial gaps in graduation: while 74% of white students served under IDEA received a high school diploma in the 2016-2017 school year, only 70% of Latino students with disabilities and 64% of Black students received a diploma.
As President, Elizabeth will work in partnership with the disability community to combat ableism. And she will fight alongside them for justice across all aspects of life and to fulfill the goals of the ADA: equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self sufficiency.
Elizabeth will start by making clear that disability is a priority in her administration, creating a National Office of Disability Coordination to ensure that federal programs work together to support people with disabilities.
Elizabeth will also fight for every kid in America to have access to a high-quality public education. She will fight to fully fund IDEA, tackle discriminatory practices like zero-tolerance discipline policies, and ensure that students of color with disabilities are treated fairly when it comes to identification, classroom placement, services and accommodations, and discipline. She will also fight to make appropriate services available to English Language Learners and immigrant students with disabilities and to fully fund research on how to best incorporate culturally responsive practices in special education services.
Elizabeth will establish new protections for immigrants with disabilities and end the Trump inhumane immigration agenda that has coupled xenophobia with ableism. Whether they are held in detention, being screened, or taking the naturalization exam, she’ll ensure that immigrants with disabilities have access to appropriate accommodations in every aspect of the immigration process. Elizabeth will roll back the Trump administration’s ableist Public Charge rule change. And she will establish an Office of New Americans, that will collaborate with community organizations, so immigrants with disabilities can receive support — from early intervention services to vocational rehabilitation — tailored to their needs and experiences.
Elizabeth will also:
Fight for economic security for people with disabilities by rewriting the rules of the economy to end labor market discrimination and exploitation and foster inclusivity;
Ensure that technology is used to advance the interests of people with disabilities;
Protect the rights and civil liberties of people with disabilities in areas like voting, criminal justice, and parental custody;
Promote affordable, accessible, and green living;
Ensure consistent access to affordable, high quality health care; and
Make America a leader in the fight for disability rights around the world.
We all do better when everyone has the opportunity to fully participate in all aspects of life, and together, we can realize a truly inclusive world. Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan for protecting the rights and equality of people with disabilities
From racist voter ID laws to the closure of polling places, gerrymandering to purging voter rolls, states have tried to suppress the political power of Latinos.
The right to vote is a fundamental right, and Elizabeth’s plan ensures that racist and corrupt politicians don’t undermine it or our democracy. Her plan bans purging voter rolls arbitrarily and would require independent redistricting commissions to prevent gerrymandering. And where racist or corrupt politicians refuse to follow the law, the federal government will temporarily take over the administration of their federal elections to guarantee the fundamental right to vote.
Elizabeth will mandate automatic voter registration and same-day registration for federal elections. She’ll fight to make Election Day a national holiday, require all federal elections to have a minimum of 15 days of early voting, expand voting hours, allow the option to vote with a sworn statement of identity instead of an ID, ensuring convenient polling locations, and offer voting by mail. Elizabeth will also ensure that every polling location has secure and accessible ballot machines. She’ll research improving voting security and accessibility for all people, including those people for whom English isn’t their primary language.
And she’ll fight to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Native American Voting Rights Act to shut down a host of festering discriminatory practices.
This plan would make voting, and our democracy, stronger, more secure, and more inclusive. To continue reading about Elizabeth’s plan to strengthen our democracy, click here.
Latinos have one of the highest labor force participation and have driven 70% of the growth in America’s workforce. But changes in our economy have left millions of working families hanging on by their fingernails. Wages have largely stagnated even as corporate profits have soared and worker productivity has risen steadily. The share of national income that goes to labor has declined and is near its lowest point in almost 70 years.
Today, the average income of Latino workers is $30,000 a year. Latino workers also have limited benefits -- only 25% have paid family leave through an employer -- and are vulnerable to unstable and unpredictable scheduling practices. Unpredictable work schedules are leaving too many workers with no control over their time and not enough hours to make ends meet. And as of 2014, only 9.2% of Latino workers were union members.
These trends reflect a shift of trillions of dollars away from the pockets of working families. And they are all driven by a single underlying problem: workers don’t have enough power.
From the Delano Grape Boycott led by United Farmworkers founders Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Philip Veracruz to the Unite Here hospitality workers leading the largest hotel strike in history, unions have been crucial to advancing labor power of Latino workers.
That’s why Elizabeth will pursue an agenda of economic patriotism, focused on empowering workers and raising wages. She will:
Strengthen organizing, collective bargaining, and the right to strike, which includes protecting gig workers so they are able to form unions;
Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour for all workers, providing more overtime pay, and protecting pensions and other retirement savings;
Increase worker choice and control by requiring large companies to let workers elect board members;
Increase funding for the EEOC, OSHA, the DOL Civil Rights Center, and the wage and hour division of the Labor Department, which are crucial to protect the safety, well-being, and rights protections for Latino workers who continue to face major safety and health concerns in the workplace, wage discrimination, and workplace harassment;
Strengthen protections for home care workers, including ensuring equal treatment for them under our labor laws, guaranteeing that all home care workers can join a union or other worker organization, creating training and certificate programs to address safety, and enforcing adequate federal nursing home staff minimum requirements, and reversing the Trump-era rule that prevents home care workers that work with Medicaid beneficiaries from using paycheck deductions for health insurance contributions and union dues;
Extend labor rights to all workers, including farm workers and domestic workers. Both farm workers and domestic workers are not covered by the NLRA and not fully covered by the FLSA and the OSH Act. These exclusions hurt millions of workers and have no justification. That’s why Elizabeth will fight to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and Fairness for Farm Workers Act, proposals that address these historical injustices. I’m also committed to ensuring that these workers have the right to organize, whether through the NLRA or some other means; and
Nominate a demonstrated advocate for workers to fill any Supreme Court vacancy.
Click here to read Elizabeth’s full plan on empowering workers and raising wages.
Elizabeth will also fight for a fair work week. That includes:
Requiring employers to give two weeks’ advance notice of work schedules and empowering workers to ask for schedules that work for them, without fear of retaliation;
Guaranteeing workers 11 hours between shifts and compensating them with higher pay for hours voluntarily worked within that window; and
Removing the perverse incentives that keep giant corporations from making their workers full-time, extending benefit protections to part-time workers, and requiring employers to offer additional hours to existing part-time workers before hiring new ones.
And, Elizabeth will fight to make paid family and medical leave available to all workers.
Together, these changes will shift power back towards working people, boost America’s labor movement, and help create an economy that works for everyone.
The playing field is tilted against entrepreneurs of color. On average, Black, Latino, Native American, and other minority households have a lot less wealth than white households, and only 12% of Latino-owned businesses reported accessing bank loans. That means they have less of their own money to put into their business and less collateral to attract outside credit.
Elizabeth’s plan creates a new Small Business Equity Fund with $7 billion in funding to provide grants to entrepreneurs of color. It will operate through states and municipalities and be targeted at closing the startup capital gap for entrepreneurs of color by limiting it to those who have less than $100,000 in household wealth. It’ll also direct all state-level efforts to distribute this new funding to partner with diverse investment managers. And it will support 100,000 minority-owned businesses and is expected to provide over a million jobs – many of which would serve communities of color.
This Small Business Equity Fund is just one tool to address the racial wealth gap in our economy so that it’s working for all of us. To continue reading about this plan, click here.
Higher education opened a million doors for Elizabeth. It’s how the daughter of a janitor in a small town in Oklahoma got to become a teacher, a law school professor, a U.S. Senator, and eventually, a candidate for President of the United States. Today, it’s virtually impossible for a young person to find that kind of opportunity.
More Latino students are going to college than ever and graduation rates are growing, but college attendance and degree attainment rates are still much lower than their white peers. Today only one in five Latino people in the labor force has a bachelor’s degree. Latino students can face barriers to higher education like staggering tuition costs, navigating bureaucracy as a first-generation college student, family commitments, and balancing work and school. Shut out of four-year colleges, Latino students are overrepresented at predatory, for-profit schools that target students of color and saddle them with suffocating debt, then leave them worse off in the labor market. And because of factors like discrimination in employment and the racial wealth gap, Latino students who do finish a bachelor’s degree on average still owe a staggering 79% of their original loan balance 12 years later—and, on average, those who finished an associate’s degree still owe the exact same amount that they took out.
Elizabeth’s Student Loan Debt Cancellation Plans will
cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt for more than 95% of Americans who carry it,
provide an enormous middle-class stimulus that will boost economic growth, increase home purchases, and fuel a new wave of small business formation,
substantially increase wealth for Black and Latino families and reduce both the Black-White and Latino-White wealth gaps. In fact, Elizabeth’s plan would close the black-white wealth gap among people with student loan debt by 25%, and
direct the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights to conduct a wide scale investigation into the roles that colleges, state higher education systems, and the student loan industry play in contributing to racial disparities in student borrowing and student loan outcomes;
Once we’ve cleared out the debt that’s holding down an entire generation of Americans, we’ll ensure that we never have another student debt crisis again, and that our higher education system serves all students equally. That’s why Elizabeth’s plans
give every American the opportunity to attend a two-year or four-year public college or technical school without paying a dime in tuition or fees. Nearly seven in ten Latino students attend public two- or four- year colleges that would be free under Elizabeth’s plan,
make free college truly universal -- not just in theory, but in practice -- by making higher education of all kinds more inclusive and available to every single American, prohibiting schools from considering citizenship status or criminal history in admissions decisions, and investing an additional $100 billion in Pell Grants -- expanding funding available for non-tuition expenses and to more people;
require public colleges to complete an annual audit to figure out what’s causing racial gaps in enrollment and graduation rates—and take steps to solve them,
study the racial disparities in higher education, their causes and provide recommendations for how Congress ought to address them, and
establishes a minimum $50 billion fund for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions, including Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities to ensure these institutions have the resources they need.
Click here to continue reading about how Elizabeth will cancel student loan debt and make higher education affordable.
Immigrants have always been a vital source of American strength — and they are every bit as much a part of America as those who were born in the United States. That’s why Elizabeth has a plan to create a fair immigration system that keeps families together, preserves our security, grows our economy, and reflects our values.
Donald Trump has weaponized a flawed immigration system and advanced policies of cruelty and division that demonize immigrants - especially those from Black and Brown countries.
He has aggressively weakened asylum protections -- particularly harming domestic violence survivors, immigrants with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ Latinx immigrants -- and slashed refugee numbers. He’s also tried to revoke protections from recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), jeopardizing the future hundreds of thousands of young people, and threatened withdrawing Temporary Protected Status (TPS), plunging hundreds of thousands of Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and Salvadorans into fearful uncertainty. And he has cruelly separated parents from their children and locked thousands of kids in cages.
Elizabeth believes our laws and our values compel us to help those fleeing violence and oppression. She will:
Decriminalize migration, significantly reduce detention and end private detention facilities, and provide rights and due process for all immigrants. Reaffirm asylum protections for those fleeing violence, and end policies like metering and end the “Remain in Mexico.”
Eliminate abusive enforcement by remaking Customs and Border Protection and ICE from top to bottom in a way that reflects our values and holding those who violate immigrants’ rights accountable.
Raise the refugee cap to 175,000 by the end of her first term, and reinstate Temporary Protected Status designations and Deferred Enforced Departure to protect individuals at risk in their home countries.
Protect those seeking refuge, by providing information about the right to seek asylum, reinstating the Central American Minors program, and coordinating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to help resettle children and families who need protection.
Restore and increase aid, by committing at least $1.5 billion annually in aid to fully fund programs that target crime, disrupt trafficking, address poverty, reduce sexual violence, and enhance programs for at-risk youth in Central America and throughout our hemisphere — and Elizabeth will rally the international community to match those funds.
Elizabeth supports additional legal immigration, including expanded family reunification. And she knows that, for the good of our economy and our communities, it’s long past time to provide a path forward for the approximately 11 million undocumented individuals currently living and working in the United States. She will:
Reinstate the DACA program and protections for our Dreamers and their families, and expand the program to cover more young people.
Extend the individual exercise of discretion to offer deferred action protections to immigrants who have built careers and families in our country.
Roll back the Trump administration’s Public Charge rule change, which is forcing immigrant families to choose between staying together and ensuring their children have access to critical services.
Make it easier to become a citizen or apply for legal status by removing unnecessary legal, administrative, and financial barriers.
Push for a far-reaching legislative fix that provides a fair but achievable path to citizenship.
Establish an Office of New Americans dedicated to supporting new immigrants as they transition into our society and economy.
Click here to read Elizabeth’s plan for a fair and welcoming immigration system.
Every kid in America should have the same access to a high-quality public education—no matter where they live, the color of their skin, or how much money their parents make. That’s not the case right now. Latino students are more likely to attend racially segregated schools than they were thirty years ago, and schools with majority Black and Latino students are more likely to be chronically under-resourced. These conditions hamper a student’s ability to learn and prepare for their future.
This ends under a Warren Administration. Elizabeth has a comprehensive plan for our public education system. Her plan invests hundreds of billions of dollars in our public schools - paid for by a two-cent wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million - and makes a series of legislative and administrative changes:
Fund schools adequately and equitably: School districts serving 75% or more students of color receive $23 billion less in funding than districts serving 75% or more white students. Elizabeth would invest hundreds of billions of additional dollars in Title I and incentivize states to fund schools more progressively, so that all students have access to a great public education.
Invest an additional $50 billion in school infrastructure across the country so that no student has to attend schools with lead pipes, molding walls, or crumbling textbooks.
Renew the fight against segregation and discrimination in our schools: Elizabeth would combat practices - such as restrictive zoning laws and breakaway districts - that have helped increase segregation in our public schools - while also reinstating and improving previous guidance protecting the civil rights of Latino students. Elizabeth is also committed to protecting English Language Learners -- who make up about 10% of the entire public school student population -- by enforcing their rights to meaningful access to rigorous coursework, teachers, special education services, and integration with the rest of the student body, while fostering their home language. And she will protect the rights of immigrant students, ensuring that all immigrant children have access to a quality education, no matter their native language, national origin, immigration status, or educational history.
Provide a warm, safe, and nurturing school climate for all our kids: Instead of increasing militarization of our schools, Elizabeth knows we need to invest in programs that make our kids feel safe and welcome at school. That means more school-based mental health professionals, culturally relevant and responsive curricula, and eliminating zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately impact Latino students and replacing them with restorative justice programs to pull students into the classroom instead of pushing them out.
Treat teachers and staff like the professionals they are: Elizabeth will strengthen the ability of educators to organize and bargain for just compensation, ensure that educators aren’t drowning in debt, and build a more diverse teacher and school leadership pipeline by investing in Grow Your Own and teacher residency programs and with a $50 billion investment in HBCUs, HSIs, and other MSIs.
Stop the privatization of our public education system: All schools should be accountable to the communities where they’re based. That’s why Elizabeth supports the NAACP resolution for greater accountability and transparency of charter schools, a moratorium on federal funds toward the expansion of charter schools, and banning for-profit charter schools.
Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan on creating a great public school education for every student.
We need a president who will lift up the voices of LGBTQ+ people and fight back against discrimination. One in four LGBTQ+ people report experiencing discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity over the course of a single year — but Latinx LGBTQ+ people face unique forms of intersecting discrimination too. More than half of transgender Latinx people are harassed and bullied in school because of their gender identity, nearly one in ten report being fired for being transgender, and nearly one in five are uninsured.
Elizabeth’s LGBTQ+ plan promises to:
Fight to pass the Equality Act to explicitly guarantee that no LGBTQ+ person in America is discriminated against for who they are or who they love,
Use every legal tool available to ban discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity through executive action,
End the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people,
End discrimination against transgender Latinx women by using executive action to ban intersecting forms of discrimination that transgender women of color face and by creating a new grant program that will specifically channel resources into organizations by and for transgender people, especially transgender people of color.
Protect LGBTQ+ asylum seekers by recognizing asylum claims based on gender identity and sexual orientation and significantly reducing immigration detention, where undocumented LGBTQ+ people — particularly transgender women of color — are highly vulnerable.
Click here to read Elizabeth’s plan on LGBTQ+ rights.
87 million. That’s how many American adults in 2018 were uninsured or “underinsured.” Latinos face the highest uninsured rate of any group.
37 million American adults didn’t fill a prescription last year because of costs. 83% of older Latino voters report concerns about being able to afford prescriptions drugs for themselves or their families in the future.
57 million people had trouble covering their medical bills.
And we know that people of color face significant barriers to getting the health care coverage they need.
Health care is a human right and that’s why we need Medicare for All. Under Medicare for All, every single person in this country will be able to see the doctor they need and get their recommended treatments.
Elizabeth’s plan gets the most help to the most people as quickly as possible. Elizabeth will immediately act to lower the cost of prescription drugs, using every available tool to bring pressure on the big drug companies and bring down the high costs of many common prescription drugs, including Insulin and EpiPens. Within her first 100 days as president, Elizabeth will push Congress to give everyone the choice to join an improved Medicare program that covers vision, hearing, mental health, dental, and long term care. She will accomplish this by lowering the Medicare age limit to people over 50, and giving everyone the opportunity to join a Medicare for All option that will be free for children under 18 and for millions of families making under double the poverty level (about $50,000 for a family of four). That’s a total of nearly 135 million Americans who could get free, high-quality coverage.
Once everyone has the chance to try out the improved Medicare option, Elizabeth will push Congress, no later than her third year in office, to complete the transition to Medicare for All. Under Elizabeth’s plan, we’d be able to get Medicare for All -- that also covers vision, hearing, mental health, dental, and long-term care -- at the same cost of our current health care system and deliver an $11 trillion boost to families who will never pay another premium, deductible, or co-pay—all while not increasing middle-class taxes by one penny.
To read more about how we’d pay for Medicare for All, click here.
On average every day 100 people are killed in the U.S. by a gun—in shootings that occur in our homes, on our streets, at our playgrounds. From 2013 to 2018, almost two out of three school shootings occurred at majority-minority schools. And following the El Paso shooting, one of the deadliest hate crimes against Latinos in American history, 81% of Latino voters in Texas are concerned about racism-driven gun violence.
We can’t wait any longer. That’s why Elizabeth’s plan for gun violence prevention includes:
Executive action to rein in an out-of-control gun industry;
Breaking the NRA’s stranglehold of Congress by passing sweeping anti-corruption legislation and eliminating the filibuster so that our nation can no longer be held hostage by a small group of well-financed extremists; and
Sending Congress comprehensive gun violence legislation which she will sign into law within the first 100 days.
Specifically, Elizabeth will:
Take executive action to expand background checks, bringing the vast majority of private sales under the existing background check umbrella;
Work with Congress to create a federal licensing system -- because just like a license is required to drive a car, it should be required to purchase a firearm or ammunition;
Keep military-style assault weapons off our streets by passing a new federal assault weapons ban, banning high-capacity ammunition magazines, and prohibiting accessories that make weapons more deadly;
Secure our schools by improving the Gun-Free School Zones Act to include college and university campuses;
Protect survivors of domestic abuse by closing the “boyfriend loophole” so that any intimate partner with a domestic violence conviction involving any romantic partner is not able to purchase a gun;
Hold gun manufacturers liable for the harm they cause, and
Prohibit anyone convicted of a hate crime from owning a gun. Instead of a president who winks and nods as white nationalism gets stronger in this country, we need a president who will use all the tools available to prevent it.
Elizabeth has set a goal to reduce gun violence deaths by at least 80% — we’ll begin by implementing solutions we believe will work, and constantly revisit and update those solutions based on new public health research.
Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan to address gun violence.
From the Trump administration’s racist post-disaster response in the wake of Hurricane Maria to vulture funds squeezing out every last penny of profit from Puerto Rico, the U.S government has failed to place the lives of millions of citizens ahead of the interests of Wall Street executives.
If Puerto Rico were a big company or an American city in this kind of financial trouble, it could file for bankruptcy, pay some of its debts, discharge the rest, then start rebuilding. But because of its unique status, those legal options aren’t available.
And instead of trying to break Wall Street's grip, Congress passed PROMESA, imposing an oversight board which has slashed services, hindering the recovery.
We must do better for our fellow citizens. That’s why Elizabeth has a plan to provide comprehensive debt relief to Puerto Rico so it can rebuild and thrive.
Her plan would give U.S. territories like Puerto Rico the option to terminate their debt if they meet certain criteria, like being struck by a disaster, suffering major population loss, and staggering under overwhelming debt, and would give Puerto Rico a shot at getting out from under its crushing debt load and building a future for itself.
Her plan would also set up a fund so that certain holders of Puerto Rican bonds would be compensated when those bonds are terminated. Pensions would be left intact. Puerto Rican residents, individual investors, and credit unions are among the groups that could use the fund. Vulture funds and bond insurers would not get a penny from this fund.
Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan for comprehensive debt relief for Puerto Rico.
Elizabeth is also committed to centering justice in her response to climate change. There are 18 superfund sites in Puerto Rico alone, exposing people to toxic hazards in their water. Elizabeth believes that polluters must be held accountable for the damage they cause to our environment and communities. That’s why she will work with Congress to reinstate and then triple the Superfund tax, generating needed revenue to clean up pollution and toxic waste.
Elizabeth will invest in building climate resiliency and disaster preparedness and response in all communities. She’ll increase investments in pre-disaster mitigation in vulnerable communities, monitor post-disaster recovery, and address climate gentrification to ensure equitable recovery for all communities.
Elizabeth will also fight for access to critical federal programs that Puerto Ricans have been denied. Her plan to Protect the Rights and Equality of People with Disabilities expands SSI benefits to citizens in territories like Puerto Rico to establish equal rights to SSI for all Americans. And Medicare for All will give every single person in this country, including Puerto Rico residents, a guarantee of high-quality health care.
Extremist Republican lawmakers are trying to turn back the clock and deny access to reproductive health care.
Because nearly 20% of Latinas are uninsured, they have less access to comprehensive reproductive care—from cervical cancer screenings to birth control. And at a time when extremist Republican lawmakers want to overturn Roe v. Wade, Latinas are facing an “undue burden” of clinic closures, invasive procedures, and waiting periods. LGBTQ+ people are also deeply affected by threats to reproductive health services, and threats of ICE raids are jeopardizing the reproductive health of immigrants. People are scared and angry about what might happen to reproductive rights, but this isn’t the moment to back down. It’s time to fight back. As the women of color who started and championed the reproductive justice movement teach us, our fight must go beyond choice to ensure comprehensive reproductive services—including STI prevention and care, birth control, comprehensive sex education, care for pregnant moms, safe home and work environments, fair wages, and so much more. We must build a future that protects the right of every person to have children, the right of every person to not have children, and the right to bring children up in a safe and healthy environment.
Elizabeth’s plan calls on Congress to pass new federal laws that protect access to reproductive care by:
Guaranteeing reproductive health coverage as part of all health coverage and ensuring that all future health coverage – including Medicare for All – includes contraception and abortion coverage;
Ensuring equal access and reproductive justice by cracking down on violence at abortion clinics and making sure no one is discriminated against at work or anywhere else for the choices they make about their bodies;
Creating federal, statutory rights that parallel the constitutional rights in Roe v. Wade and that preempt state Targeted Regulations on Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws, which are designed to functionally limit and eliminate access to abortion care; and
Repealing the Hyde Amendment, ending the Trump Administration’s gag rule, and fully supporting Title X family planning funding, which funded essential reproductive health services for 4 million patients, almost a third of whom are Latino.
Click here to read about Elizabeth’s plan to protect reproductive rights.
As the rural Latino population has more than doubled over the last 30 years, Latino communities are breathing life into towns across America. But Washington and corporate America have turned their backs on them. Broadband companies exclude entire rural communities of color and rural hospital closures -- which have been predominantly shut down in Black and Latino communities -- raise barriers to health care. And our current food system often takes fresh produce out of the communities that grow it. Elizabeth will fight for rural communities by:
Providing rural communities affordable access to the Internet by establishing a public option for broadband through a new $85 billion federal grant program to massively expand broadband across the country.
Protecting access to health care in rural communities by creating a new designation under Medicare for rural hospitals, ending the harmful effects of consolidation, increasing funding for Community Health Centers, and creating a new $25 billion capital fund to expand access to care. Elizabeth will also expand our health care workforce by investing more resources in building the pipeline of culturally-competent and language-inclusive medical professionals in rural areas and other areas with shortages, from community health aides to physicians.
Supporting rural communities’ access to fresh food and economic opportunity by providing farmers and their communities with the resources to build regional food systems and ensuring all federally-supported public institutions partner with farmers to provide fresh, local food.
The rural Latino community is the lifeblood of America’s agricultural system, and Latino people make up over 80% of all farmworkers. But those working on the land suffer dangerous conditions and low wages-- in part because of the historic injustice of farmworkers’ exclusion from basic worker protections. Just 3% of farms are owned by Latino farmers -- many of whom struggle for equitable access to credit. And it is estimated that Latino communities in the Southwest have lost over a million acres of property under partition sales, and a new generation of Latino farmers are at risk today. Elizabeth will fight for Latino farmers and farmworkers and invest in the rural communities they support. Specifically, she will:
End systemic discrimination at USDA by dismantling the structures in USDA that perpetuate discrimination -- including by establishing an Equity Commission staffed by Black, brown, and indigenous farmers, researchers, and activists, and reforming the Office of Civil Rights to actually protect the civil rights of underrepresented farmers and farmworkers.
Create real access to land and credit to open the door for a new generation of diverse farmers that reflects the diversity of our country, including by developing a land trust to put land in the hands of marginalized communities, expanding access to credit, and dedicating funding for education, training, and research for farmers and farmworkers who have historically been excluded.
Defend the rights of farmworkers by fighting to pass the Fairness for Farm Workers Act, ensuring that farmworkers are a priority at USDA, supporting the mental health of Black and brown farmers and farmworkers, and denying access to funds for agribusinesses with a record of labor and environmental violations.
This and more is possible under Elizabeth’s plans. Click here to continue reading about how a Warren administration would address discrimination and ensure equity for farmers of color, and here to read about her plan to invest in rural America.
All three of Elizabeth's brothers served in the military – so she knows the sacrifices that our service members and their families make for our country.
Latinos are the fastest growing minority group in the military. 43% of enlisted male recruits and over half of female recruits are Latino or a racial minority. But Latino service members remain significantly under-represented in the leadership ranks.
Elizabeth believes that our service members are our biggest strategic advantage, and our national security community is only strengthened by its diversity. She will honor our service members and veterans and fight to provide our troops, military families, and veterans with the benefits they have earned. A Warren Administration will:
Protect earned benefits and ensure that pay remains competitive for all those who serve.
Expand support for military families by increasing military spouse employment and access to quality child care.
Ensure all of our veterans and their families have the chance to get essential job training and degrees, without taking on a dime of student loan debt.
Ensure all military personnel have a safe, affordable place to live, by improving military housing, protecting families from landlord abuse, and holding private developers accountable.
Protect immigrant veterans and family members of serving military personnel from deportation, ensure women are given equal opportunities to compete for command and promotions and enhance the quality of and access to health care for women service members, and protect LGBTQ+ service members and veterans.
Put the care and safety of those who serve or have served in uniform first, by fighting to eliminate military sexual assault and sexual harassment, end military and veteran suicide, treat the opioid and addiction crisis, and address invisible wounds of war like toxic exposure, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and traumatic brain injuries.
Protect our men and women in uniform from financial fraud and abuse and protect low-income and older veterans from scams targeting their pension benefits.
Uphold the rights of veterans with disabilities, ensuring access to quality health care, and supporting veteran caregivers.
Prepare service members to return to civilian life, eliminate the veterans’ benefits backlog, and fight veteran homelessness.
Fully invest in a 21st Century VA Health Care system worthy of the veterans it serves.
You can read her full plan to keep our promises to service members, veterans, and military families here.
One thing is clear: it’s getting harder to save enough for a decent retirement and Social Security has become a main source of income for most seniors.
On average, Latino and Black workers are more likely to be paid poverty-level wages and are less likely to have 401(k) accounts. And those who do have them have smaller balances and are more likely to have to make withdrawals before retirement. 40% of Latino beneficiaries relied on Social Security benefits as their only source of retirement income. 62% of older Latino workers work physically demanding jobs, leading to higher likelihood of disability, early exit from the job market, and reduced retirement benefits.
Pay disparities and wrongheaded notions that value salaried work over time spent raising children or caring for elderly relatives are also barriers to financial security in retirement. When people spend time out of the workforce to provide care for a relative, their average lifetime earnings are smaller and so are their Social Security benefits. Latinos report the highest rates and the most hours of family caregiving. And because access to family leave is particularly limited for Latinas, they are more likely to lose their jobs when they take leave to provide care, which can lead to reductions in their Social Security benefits. In 2017, the average annual Social Security benefit for Latinas was only $11,986.
Elizabeth has helped lead the fight in Congress to expand Social Security, and her plan would provide the biggest and most progressive increase in Social Security benefits in nearly half a century. Elizabeth’s plan on expanding Social Security benefits would:
Increase standard Social Security and Social Security Disability Insurance benefits immediately by $200 a month -- $2,400 a year -- for every current and future beneficiary in America.
Change out-of-date Social Security rules to improve benefits for lower-income families, women, people of color, people with disabilities, and public-sector workers.
Value the work of caregivers by creating a new credit for people who take time out of the workforce to care for a family member -- and recognize caregiving for the valuable work it is.
Extends Social Security benefits to full-time students until the age of 24 if they’ve got a parent who has a disability or has died.
Helps people with disabilities build financial security and get the care they need by fully funding the Social Security Administration, rewriting eligibility rules to stop punishing beneficiaries for returning to work and eliminating the 5-month Social Security Disability Insurance benefits waiting period and the 24-month Medicare waiting period.
Click here to continue reading about Elizabeth’s plan on expanding Social Security.
Our society and our economy demand so much of women—but they place a particular burden on Black, Latina, Native American, Asian, and other women of color. More than 70% of Black mothers and more than 40% of Latina mothers are their families’ sole breadwinners—compared to less than a quarter of white mothers. And the wage gap Latinas face is staggering: Latinas on average make only $.53 for every $1 their white male counterparts make.
The experiences of women of color are not one-dimensional: immigration status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and ability all shape how a person’s work is valued in the workplace. But our economy should be working just as hard for women of color as women of color work for our economy and their families.
That’s why Elizabeth introduced a plan: a set of executive actions to implement on day one of the Warren administration to boost wages for women of color, open up new pathways to the leadership positions they deserve, and strengthen and target enforcement against systemic discrimination.
Click here to read more about Elizabeth’s plan for valuing the work of women of color.
The rich and powerful run Washington. And what’s more: After making a killing from the economy they’ve rigged, they don't pay taxes on that accumulated wealth.
We need to fundamentally transform our tax code so that we tax the wealth of the ultra-rich, not just their income. The Ultra-Millionaire (or two cent) tax asks the very wealthiest people in the country to pitch in a little more so that we can fund crucial investments that provide opportunities for millions of Americans.
Here’s how it works: A family with a net worth of more than $50 million – roughly the wealthiest 75,000 households – would pay a 2% (or 2 cents) tax on every dollar of their net worth above $50 million and another 4% (or 4 cents) tax for every dollar above $1 billion.
That’s it – simple.
Wealth in this country is so lopsided that this small new tax on the tiny sliver of ultra-rich families will bring in $3.75 trillion over the next ten years. Think about how that money could be used. We can invest it in:
universal child care and Pre-K, including raising wages for child care workers and preschool teachers,
a historic $800 billion investment in our public schools;
free two-year or four-year public college and technical school,
canceling student loan debt for more than 95% of the 45 million people who have it, and
a $50 billion fund for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority Serving Institutions, including Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities.
This is an investment in the future of our society.
Click here to read more about the ultra-millionaire tax.